The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-08-06

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Liberty's great national temple. Lib
erty has always been fact. But not
until it came out of the poets soul,
with wings Of song, could it fly to loyal
hearts and nerve them to strike the
Titanic blow that could break the fet-
ters of human slavery.
Liberty has always been precious to
our nation. But Whittier and Lowell,
Phillips and Garrison, and Harriet
Beecher Stowe, had to put it into divine
song, utter it in the burning and living
words Of the orator, and build it into
the fiction of "Uncle Toms Cabin"
send it as John the Baptist crying in
the wilderness of mems souls for twenty
years, ''prepare ye the way of the Lord" !"
before we could give up slavery, and
make this land of freemen.
Books make our free institutions.
They also preserve them. Our school
books contain the culled and condensed
knowledge of all time. The most USE
full knowledge of the latest science, the
brightest scholarship from all sources,
are Illuminating, with the electric light
of truth, in our public schools, the
minds of youth, that they may compre-
hend and fill the large places of free
men in free nation. Wherever the
schoolmaster is abroad with books in
hand, our free institutions are safe.
Ignorance and vice breed anarchy.
knowledge and virtue enthrone liberty
and justice and peace.
The peril of the nation to-day is the
ignorant horde that the old monarchies
are pouring upon our shores. They
are filled with Nihilism, Socialism, An
archy and hatred of all government and
law. The school book is the remedy,
making them first intelligent to COM
prehend the genius of liberty; then or
der-loving, useful and happy citizens OF
a free Republic. When the public
school has wrought its work in them
they will see that this good government
is ''of the people, by the people and fol
the people," and the people must be-
Free men, casting with unpurchased hand
The vote that shakes the turrets of the land. "
Another danger is intemperance-
slavery that degrades manhood, robs
honest toll, blights the home, defies law
and breeds crime. But the press, that
mighty enginery of public opinion
with its million voices, and the scien-
ti6c text book in our public schools,
teaching the effect of alcoholics on the
system, are working grandly to grow a
racesof free men, who, mastering them
selves, can rule a nation.
But books are so potent in the ma
tion's life, that we cannot confine them
to the public school or the college.
We build another college, whose curri-
culum is everything man wants to
know. We build it not at some great
center, as a State Institution, but in
every live town. 1t is not an expen-
sive luxury, one only for the rich. 1t is
free to all ambitious youth, to every
profession, and open to every home. 1t
is the Public Library. The professors
chairs are filled by books. 1t has the
most learned and most numerous fac
Guilty, for it represents all knowledge
and includes the great and profound
scholars of the past. These free pro-
fessors are not riveted to their chairs.
They go to the humblest habitation of
the laborer, the palace of the rich, the
office, the shop, the home. The preach
er, the teacher, the lawyer, the states
man and philosopher are all students,
and may take one lesson or many.
These voiceless teachers go to the sick,
with words of peace and love, to the
sorrowing with hope, to the young
with ambition, to the wayward with
warning and strength, and to the brave
with truth and light.
What grand school for the educa-
tion of a nation of free men Not one
is excluded from its privileges. 1t says
to the poor boys, Franklin, Greeley,
Wilson and Abraham Lincoln, ''If you
cannot go to Harvard or Yale, come to
me, and 1 will make you the philos-
opher, the diplomat, the statesman, the
wise legislator and good president, the
defenders, guides and saviours of ma
tion." How important that no unwor-
thy teacher finds place here to corrupt
youth, vitiate manhood or undermine
virtue Bad books are open bitches,
neglected reservoirs corrupting the
crystal waters of knowledge, breeding
filth and slime, disease and death.
They poison youth, feed the perverted
taste and increase the vicious class.
These 'books that are not books"
should be excluded from our libraries.
They are, as Charles Lamb says, "things
in books clothing perched upon shelves
like false saints" We will drive them
hence as we would the betrayer of vir-
tue, the friend of vice, the enemy of
free institutions.
The people of this land spend $780,
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